Microbes on the Move

In late November 1995, while on a reporting trip to the island of Zanzibar, off the coast of East Africa, I was bit repeatedly by mosquitoes. This is not uncommon, and I paid it no mind--I was already suffering from what I believed to have been shigella, a nasty gastrointestinal parasite, and I was feeling miserable anyway.

It wasn't until early December, while hiking in the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest of Uganda, that I began to suffer from a prostrating fever and severe shakes. A short while later, atop a mountain, I fell unconscious. This was an unfortunate place to fall unconscious, for two reasons. One, while unconscious, I was attacked by fire ants. Two, the Ugandan parks service owns no medevac helicopters, so once I awoke--the paroxysm of fever having subsided for the moment--I had to crawl down the mountain with the help of a very kind park official, who told me he would lose his job if I died on him. Read more

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